I was raised as a Catholic, but my parents were always really wonderful in not pushing anything down our throats (unless you want to call being forced to take church school 'pushing', but the pizza parties more than made up for the inconvenience) and not trying to justify things "because God said so". I love my parents. They are really cool people — then again, they don't know that their baby is a Witch.
At about the time I was to be confirmed as a Catholic, I began to do some heavy-duty logic-processing about this whole religion thing. I could not understand why a Supreme Being would endow us with the mental powers we have, and not want us to use them! I began to reason that if I were going to go to Hell just for trying to be the best person I could possibly be, whether or not I made it into church every week (and believe me, I went every week without fail), then so be it. I am, after all, only human. I also watched things like "Clash of the Titans" (silly movie, I know) where the Romans were showed worshipping Athena, and I thought, these people were making tribute to their idea of Deity. What makes this any less valid than what we do today? The names were different, but the intent and the reverence were ever present.
Then I went off to college and really began to think for myself. :) I took art history classes, which unknowingly exposed me to a harsh reality: that most if not all of the iconography and legends of Christianity had been appropriated from the Pagans! My professors never made so bold a statement, of course; I saw pictures of 'pre-Christian art' with captions that said things like 'later used as a model for the Virgin Mary', and I made the connection easily enough. I felt like I had been lied to all of those years. And then I took a class called "The Ethics of Humanism", which put forth that humans could be moralistic without religion (something I wholeheartedly concur with — people will do things because they are right, and not just because their God tells them to; this is where knowledge really is power). I read the book for the class. The first section outlined and analyzed the whole tale of the Forbidden Fruit — which is nothing more than a desire to deny the Church's subjects the one thing that makes us as a people human: knowledge! After coming to this and many other conclusions, I could not help but abandon all of it. Spiritually, it did not fulfill me. An idea of a distant God up in Heaven that would save me only if I did His two-step just didn't make sense, and I could not follow what I did not believe could be.
I wanted to ask someone, anyone, that because I do not believe in the same God as the Christians (but I do believe in Deity), does this mean that, for example, if there is a Judgement Day, a man who goes to church each week yet thinks nothing of taking a human life will get dibs on Heaven, while I, a fairly moralistic, caring person who would not willingly harm another, am made to suffer an eternity of doom? I think Deity is smarter than that, don't you?
I wasn't able to find anything, spiritually, to fill the void the way I needed it to be filled. I burned candles and incense and said my prayers in the moonlight. I practiced magic, though I didn't know at the time that that's what magic was. (Hey, Christians do magic too — what else do you call turning water into wine?)
Friends I had made through the Internet while I was in college, I later discovered to be Pagans. They had already taught me through the course of our friendship that it was not a religion of devil-worshipping baby sacrificers, and that the Old Religion had been misaligned and misunderstood over the ages, thanks almost entirely to Christianity. But it was to me still so mysterious and vague.
I remember when I first heard the Wiccan Rede. An no harm done, do as ye will. I got shivers up my spine. YES! This is the rule that I live by! And there are others that believe it, too? Fantastic! But I was afraid to follow it as a religion. Yes, guilt is one of the things Catholicism is good at fostering, and even though I knew I could not believe in Deity through those set of rules, I still felt guilty for wanting to pursue Wicca as my religion. Can you believe any religion would want anyone to feel this way, ever?
In February of 1995, I decided to take the first real step in learning all I could about that which so many sought to suppress. I took a workshop that intoduced me to Wicca; the first class involved reaching a trance-like state where I actually believe I spoke to Diana, Goddess of the Hunt and of the Full Moon! Taking those courses helped expand my mind to alternate possibilities (and I mean more than just spiritually), and helped me to grow and learn as a person.
I'm not saying that Judeo-Christian beliefs are wrong, and I would never prejudge anyone based on their spiritual path. Every person has the right to follow their bliss, and I'd be the last person you'd expect to go crusading (pun intended). However, "mainstream" religions don't have the market on morality, even though they seem to think they do. I think that there is a lot of good done by monotheistic religions, but there is also a lot of harm done (in my eyes), to the human spirit and to the human family. What good can ultimately be done by telling your followers in a given religion that "Our Way is the One True Way and everyone else is WRONGWRONGWRONG and because they aren't True Believers we must hate them and even kill them for that reason alone"? I feel a lot more comfortable particpating in a spirituality where everyone without exception is accepted, where people are not made to feel guilty for their humanness. There is no extreme of good or evil, no devil; no Heaven or Hell. Diety is not some vague, far away entity sitting in an ivory tower somewhere ruling supreme over mankind — Deity is here, within each of us, within each living thing on this planet. As a result, there is a belief in the unbreakable connectedness of humans and Earth, a belief in the presence of good and evil in each of us, and that this is not wrong or sinful, but just the way it is. This does not mean we run rampant pillaging and looting simply because harming is a 'natural thing'. Quite the opposite. The Threefold Law goes both ways. Do you harm or good, it will return on you threefold.
There is, naturally, a whole lot more to Paganism and Wicca than I speak of here. I am, by all means, still very much a novice, and I can only speak of that which I have personally experienced. You want to know more? Go to a "New Age" bookstore, or even a Pagan bookstore. Find out more for yourself.
Perhaps in reaction to all of those years of sit/stand/sit/kneel/say this now/etc., I try not to lock myself into any rigid form of worship. I try to Circle on the major holidays, but more likely than not I'll burn a candle and speak to the Goddess, connect to Her in my own way. I'll say a blessing on the moon when it's full. I see no point in suffering for a slim possibility of Heaven, when I can live and enjoy and do good now.